Portland’s MLS Offers More Views to Use

September 13th, 2007

Recently, Portland’s multiple listing service, RMLS, announced an upgrade to their servers, allowing an additional 8 pictures to be uploaded for each active listing. Now, an agent can submit 16 images for each listing, at twice the earlier resolution allowed before.

So, that’s good news, right?

In theory, consumers get more views of each home and hopefully, better image quality. But this new flexibility should come with a warning:

Should we use all 16 images to market each listing?

I say it depends on the house. Some homes just won’t benefit from having additional images, due to size, disrepair, or owner’s unwillingness to clean up or de-clutter. For my money, the mandatory photos should capture the front of the home, the family and/or living room, the kitchen (from a couple angles), dining area, the master bedroom, plus the rear of the house and backyard. Beyond that, it would depend on other material or visual features of interest.

When the photo limit was 8, I always augmented my listings with photo tours like this one. Now, even with 16 available images, I expect to continue this practice because it allows for unlimited photos with larger formats and some marketing flexibility for me.

Many homes have features and visual interest that can easily take advantage of the extra allowance. Sizeable master baths, media rooms, garden sheds, territorial views, a shot of the neighborhood, or nice guest quarters can all be shown in the picture set now.

But what we should strive to avoid are toilet-dominated bathroom shots, overflowing laundry areas, garages bulging with flea market goods, enormous bedroom sets in postage-stamp bedrooms, and pictures of the front-drive with the Gremlin on cinder blocks. You think I’m kidding, but even when there were just 8 pictures, we’d see this sort of thing frequently.

Below are a couple examples I’m talking about. They are real photos found in other MLS sites:

and

Thankfully, these weren’t found in the Portland MLS. Thanks to Athol Kay of reagentinct.com, for use of his Bad MLS Photos of the Day. There’s lots more where that came from.

I challenge my local broker-brethren to stay off his list! Remember, quality over quantity.

Technorati Tags: Portland, Oregon, homes, RMLS, MLS, pictures, photos

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